Location Scouting County Grounds

Our first Imagine MKE project is going to be about the County Grounds so we wandered through the woods looking for the things that make the area cool and visual.

Here are my best guesses on where all the pictures were taken. Along with a note about parking and where to pick up the path into the woods.

Location Scouting Hatches Harbor

Jeff let me tag along with him yesterday when he did his field work. The man works 12-14 hour days during the field season, so it was very generous of him to add in a little extra time for me. We went to Race Point North and saw absolutely no terns at all, though sometimes that location is hopping. And then we went to Hatches Harbor where there were several hundred terns scattered around.

I had my Nikon with me so I got some photos and video, but it was neither the right camera, nor the right lens, nor the right time of day by the time we found the birds, so these images are just to give you an idea. It was good to go to get a sense of how much walking (with gear) will be involved, where and when it's likely to see the birds, and how much of a challenge it will be for me and the audience to distinguish the roseates from the other terns and even just other shore birds.

Take a look.

Esther's Front Step and a new Tim

I have had a very productive day. I met with two guys to be our new Tim because Adam had to back out. I liked them both. It would have been a much harder decision, but one of them had a conflict for one of the nights and the other was available for all 4. Done.

I also did a bunch of location scouting. I met with the guy from BU who is going to get us Esther's Front Step. He showed me half a dozen places. Two weren't right. Any of the other 4 could have worked, but I had a definite favorite and when I showed the picture to Scully she liked it a lot. So yea! I also took some pictures of the classroom and hallway while I was out. I'll get some pictures of the professor's office on Tuesday. Then the only things left to find are Sarah's apartment/study and the bar.

Camera Tests

Scully and I went out with the camera that we'd like to use for Ghost Tours and ran some tests. In the daylight part of the video we had a 24mm lens on. I was wanting to see what it would look like if we attempted to stay on the building's path and off the public sidewalk. If we're not blocking the sidewalk the city won't care about us.

Then in the night time shots we switched to a 50mm lens. We had to jack the ISO to 3200 (which is tons, we're wanting to really shoot at about 800) and open up to f/2.0. One would expect that to be tough to keep in focus, and also grainy as hell. Actually, I'm quite happy with how it looks. If this is what we can get with just the existing light then once we bring in some lights of our own, and also find out what the color temperature is with that weird mix of light, it's going to look very cool.

The location at night

I went back to the location from the last post because I wanted to do some sound tests checking for noise from the nearby highway. While I was there I shot a couple of night photos just to see what the existing light is.

Location Scouting

I'll put something more formal on the official film blog, but I have a bunch of photos and thoughts and figured this audience would want the raw materials.